


Two of Hearts

by orphan_account



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, M/M, Reincarnation, Sounds weird but bear with me children itll be great
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-18 20:17:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14859566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Enjolras is the handsome, blooming columnist for the local newspaper. Grantaire is the mysterious cynic who criticizes his choice of ice-cream. It spirals a bit out of control quickly after.(title change from Pistachio Ice-Cream)





	Two of Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> Ooohkay so this plot is basically ripped directly from dandelion wine by ray bradbury, really good book 100% recommend it if you want a nice quick summer read. And trust me this AU is a bit bizarre but I’m excited to write it! Probs 3 chapters, hoping to finish by the end of next week. School ends in three days and I definitely need to be studying for finals but it’s an hour ‘til midnight and I figured I should upload on barricade day while I still can. 
> 
> Title is from 80s total dance bop by Stacey Q by the same name. Has literally no correlation with this story, I just freakin’ love that song! I-I-I-I-I need, I need you...
> 
> All that to say, I hope you enjoy!

The facts about Julien Enjolras are simple and soon stated. He was twenty and was born in the year 1900 even. His hair was fair and wavy and his eyes were a cloudy sky and his skin was peaches-n-cream. He had freckles like fairy dust from walking in the sun in the warmer months. He was kind to those that mattered and furtively polite to those that didn’t. He lived beside a river that didn’t have a name, and he worked as a columnist at his best friends’ town newspaper and loved every darned minute of it. He could convince anyone of anything. He was deeply in love with the world and her people. He tried desperately to save her every day. 

Despite this, Enjolras was not one to indulge in finer pleasures. He lived as cheap and efficient as he could, for he did not make very much money, no matter how much he loved his job. His parents were both very rich but he could hardly remember their faces. He went to a private boys’ school in the city as a child and only came home for the summers, but even then he had a nanny to take care of him. His parents wanted him to go to medical school but he didn’t and so he left to live in a town sequestered from the rest of the world by a mirage of yellow fields, mystery, and the aforementioned river. The children around town claimed it’s always the best temperature at sunset to swim and play in but Enjolras refused to even dip a toe. He was too busy, after all, and he was wearing his nice pair of shoes with navy socks and he would have to sit down (which would assuredly get his trousers dirty as well) and undo the garters on his socks and untie the laces on his shoes and set them all aside on the bank and hope they wouldn’t get stolen by some sneaky neighbor and by then it would be dark and there really never would be a good reason to be standing in the shallows of the water in the nighttime. No, certainly not—Enjolras would much rather walk briskly by on his way home, vaguely appreciating the setting sun splashing a spray of red above his head, than meddle with unnecessary things. 

Of course, his friends didn’t necessarily support his practical attitude—his closest friend, who ran the newspaper along with his business partner Combeferre, was actively, vehemently against it. 

“Live a little!” his friend would say. This friend was called Courfeyrac. He wore colorful ribbon on his hats and the constant look of poorly concealed mischief on his face. He and Enjolras had been close ever since Enjolras moved here aged eighteen and a half, but Enjolras still didn’t know his first name. One never runs into many Courfeyracs around, so it didn’t matter, regardless. 

“I’m living fine,” Enjolras would inevitably reply. It was true to him, at least; he had a job, and friends, and a newspaper he could influence people with. He had a house that was small but his own, and he hadn’t touched a penny of his parents’ money since he was almost nineteen. He made his own meals and could repair most things in his home, and he had the savings to hire people to repair things that he couldn’t. He was free and just, he felt, so of course he was living as one should be. 

Sometimes Courfeyrac would take that as a sign to move onto a different topic of conversation as they walked through the town during their break. They would settle into world politic, upcoming papers, or mild gossip, if Enjolras was in a particular mood to let Courfeyrac ramble while he himself planned and pressed and programmed inside his quiet mind. 

Today, though, Courfeyrac simply dropped the subject entirely and they walked in silence. Enjolras was deep in thought about surely important things, and did not notice where his companion was leading him. He did not notice when they approached the storefront, and he did not even notice when the bell on the door jingled their arrival. He noticed only when a teenaged boy with a dinky hat asked him, “What can I get for you sirs?”

It was an ice-cream parlor. It was chilly inside and stung his nose with a smell like winter. ‘Ice cream!’ thought Enjolras. ‘I have neither the time nor the money nor the appetite for an ice-cream today.’ However, Enjolras knew that the boy patiently working the counter probably was doing so not because he wanted to but because it was his job, and he recognized that refusing to buy ice cream in such an establishment would certainly be received as unnecessarily cruel and rude to the boy who was just trying to help his customers. 

“I’ll have chocolate, if you would,” said Courfeyrac, and traded some pocket change for the cone, looking ten years younger as he licked away at the dripping cream. 

“Pistachio for myself,” said Enjolras, though he used a spoon instead. He and Courfeyrac sat down on brightly-colored stools in front of the bar. Courfeyrac smiled at him cheekily, surely proud of himself for getting Enjolras to break his usual demeanor of public stoicism and adulthood, and Enjolras just rolled his eyes. He opened his mouth to break the quietness of the gentle hum of the machines in the back, but was interrupted by the only other patron in the parlor. 

“Pistachio!” scoffed the man. He must have been older than the two, but neither could tell by how much—thick, youthful black hair fell into his eyes, but a cane leaned up against his stool. “You’re far too young for pistachio! That’s an adult flavor if I’ve ever tasted one!”

Enjolras squinted at this bizarre man who would so openly criticize his ice-cream preference, of all things in the world. “I’m quite old enough to make my own decisions on what I want, thank you,” said the blond with a small upturn of his nose. “And it’s just ice-cream, anyways. I don’t imagine something so trivial is worth wasting either of our breaths over, do you?”

“‘Just ice-cream’—I should think not, young man,” said he with a flourish of his spoon, which glinted in the fluorescent green lighting of the parlor. “It’s certainly much more important than anything that’s happening in this neck of the woods.”

Enjolras scoffed. “Perhaps in your circles, but not mine. How can you say something so silly as ice-cream is more important than anything else? Have you read the papers? Do you pay any attention to the world at all?”

“Not particularly,” said the man with a sly grin. 

“Well then there,” said Enjolras with finality, feeling like he had won against this strange man who seemed to understand nothing of the world. He checked his wristwatch and saw that it was only a few minutes before his and Courfeyrac’s break was to stumble to a close. “If you’ll excuse us, we have much more important things to attend to.” 

“No, you haven’t,” said the man. “I see you every day, walking past my house, chatting about the paper and politics and whatever else. Pointless, if you ask me,” he finished with a shrug. 

Enjolras’ ears turned pink. “Pointless!” he exclaimed. “If you think anything pointless is going on right now then you’re denser than I thought! Won’t you look around you and see the world for what it is?”

The man just smiled and took his last bite of dessert. “Maybe not today, if you’re busy,” said he, “but I’m free tomorrow if you’re amenable. My house is the one off Main Street with the porch swing in the front. I look forward to meeting you again.” And with that, he winked, and walked out of the parlor, limping a bit on his cane. 

Enjolras waited for the doors to swing fully closed before turning to grit his teeth at Courfeyrac. “The nerve of some people,” he muttered. He and Courfeyrac walked back to work in an amiable silence, his companion smiling into his waffle cone, himself lost in passionate thought once more.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos+comments literally make my day, and I try to respond to everyone bc I love comments so much yall dont even know.


End file.
